


With the Winter Trees and Stars

by Linden



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-15 00:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2208966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/pseuds/Linden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie's daughter never knew the beginning of her uncles' story, but she's there to see its end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be part of my Four Winters bit, but then it ended up . . . not. A fifth winter! Or, you know, just a quiet curtain-and-end-times fic, which has been sitting mostly finished on my laptop for months, and since this is my official Clean the House and the Laptop Week, it pretty much needs to get off it now. 
> 
> The title hails from Gregory Alan Isakov's _Suitcase Full of Sparks_.

**December 2050**

**Ithaca, NY**

 

If anyone asked, and sometimes they did, Neve Middleton-Baum had accepted Cornell’s job offer over Cal Poly’s because she liked the lake.

And it’s not as though that weren’t _true,_ mind you—she really did like the lake, quite a lot—but mostly she’d gone to New York instead of California because her uncles lived just outside of Ithaca, where they owned a used bookstore and an auto shop, respectively, and Neve loved them more than just about most anyone else on earth.

They weren’t her blood uncles, of course—neither her mama nor her mom had any sibs—but they were as good as, and had been part of her life ever since she was a baby: one of her earliest memories was of Dean lifting her up impossibly, impossibly high to sit on Sam’s broad shoulders, somewhere near the sea. (They were in her _earliest_ early memory, too, of a city that looked as though its great spiraling center were made of green glass, and in it Dean had her in his arms and Sam had blood on his face and both her mama and her mom were _glowing_ , but both her mama and her mom had always been gently insistent that it was just a dream, nothing more, and Neve supposed that they were right. The tower of green glass made the place look like Oz, after all, and it’s not as though Oz were something real.) She didn’t remember visiting Sam and Dean when she was little; she wasn’t even sure where they’d had a house when she was little, because they’d bought their place near Ithaca when she was ten. But regardless of where they lived, they were almost always in Kansas for her Big Days—soccer championships and end-of-the-year music recitals, her birthdays, Christmas Eve and the Fourth of July; Sam had taken her to her father-daughter dance in high school, and Dean and her mom had rebuilt a Harley Iron 883 for her when she turned seventeen, and both of them had helped move her into the third floor of Maseeh, the August she’d left Kansas for school outside of Boston. And if no one besides her, her roommate, and Dean ever knew that before midterms and finals every term she found a Box of Mystery waiting for her at the student post office in Stratton, filled with gossip mags and hot cocoa mix and her very favorite homemade chocolate-chip-and-peanut cookies, well—Neve was more than okay with keeping that kind of secret. Her uncle Dean was a mechanic and a volunteer firefighter and a general badass, and he was invested in the idea that Such Men Did Not Bake, Nor Read _US Weekly_ and _People_ , In Public.

It was during college, in her second year, after she’d started to fall head over heels in love with architecture, that she began noticing the oddities of her uncles’ house on Cayuga Lake—that the thresholds and doorframes were made from stabilized solid salt rather than wood, that there was iron peeking out from behind the wooden baseboards, that there was a hidden room, somewhere; she was _sure_ of that, even if the only reaction she’d gotten when she announced this over one Christmas Eve dinner in Ithaca was Sam’s sweet, dimpled grin, a lifted eyebrow from Dean, and a reminder from her mama not to talk with her mouth full. She’d prowled the house that evening—the dimensions were just _wrong_ , on the first floor, though she couldn’t seem to quite suss out how— and Sam and Dean had trailed after her, silent and amused, sipping at a mug of green tea and Irish coffee, respectively.

She’d found nothing, but she’d heard her uncles chuckling all the way up the stairs.

They were an odd match, in some ways, and utterly complementary in others, and Neve suspected that there was Some Dark Secrets in their past, mostly because they didn't seem to have much of one: her mom had once told her that the three of them had come from Kansas, and that Sam and Dean had grown up together as kids, but there were no photos in their house of either one of them before Sam was in his late thirties, and even the AI net-pet she'd built couldn't find a true record of them anywhere before 2027, when they'd bought their lakehouse and settled in to life in Ithaca. (She could find _some_  record before then, of course, but it was perfectly imperfect enough that Neve suspected it had been planted, and there were enough untraceable electronic fingerprints on it to make her fairly certain of it.  She'd thought when she was little that her uncles were superheroes; in college, staring at her computer screen, she'd decided on ex-black ops. It would explain, she felt, both the awesome matching tattoos and also the impressive gun and weapons collection in their closet, which Neve absolutely did not know about, because she had certainly never raided her uncles' room looking for Christmas presents when she was fourteen. Seriously. She had not.)

There were a dozen other little things about them that never quite added up, either, aside from the missing thirty-five odd years or so of their lives: the easy, unconscious way they moved around each other, for one; or the way Dean knew _absolutely every highway_ and state road in the country—seriously, he was faster and more reliable than GPS, anytime she needed directions to get somewhere between Connecticut and California—or the way Sam had calmly gotten her high school friend Allie stabilized with easy, well-practiced competence when she'd broken her femur on the soccer field during a match and the coach had been screaming for paramedics. And when it was late or he was mildly drunk or particularly happy, Dean sometimes called Sam ‘little brother,' which Neve had always thought an odd endearment between husbands, but it _fit_ them, somehow, always had, and when she stopped to think about it—which she didn’t, often—she supposed it was just a throwback to when the two of them had known each other as children in Kansas.

Or maybe when they'd been, y'know, in black ops, and all.

She herself had never been in black ops, and these days she was twelve years gone from Kansas and eight years out of college, with an enviable architectural portfolio and an excellent job, and her uncles were older, in their late sixties and early seventies, both grey-haired but still straight-backed and broad-shouldered and tall. Sam still ran five miles every morning, without fail, and Dean still drilled rookie firefighters on the weekends, without mercy, and both of them could still turn a woman’s head with their smiles, without effort.  She drove out to their house on the lake most every Sunday morning for—well, for a late breakfast, she supposed, because Dean refused to call it ‘brunch.’ Sometimes she’d bring one of her colleagues, who could talk happily with Sam about her classes for an hour; sometimes she’d bring a man she was seeing, mostly for the hilarity of watching her uncles get all protective and growly (though they’d both taken to Jake Riley, straight off, which had made her ever more certain that he was Her One); and often there would be other folks there as well: one of Dean’s mechanics from his garage, maybe, and her husband; someone interesting  Sam had met at his shop; now and again a skinny, weird, somehow adorable man named Garth—sometimes with his wife, who was lovely, and his children, who were sweet, and who always seemed so sad that the neighborhood dogs whined and fled and refused to play with them when they went into town for ice cream. She didn’t understand why, either; they were good kids, and kind.

It was on one of these Sundays, like any other—cold and sunny and two weeks before Christmas—that she arrived early at her uncles’ house to find Dean chipping ice clear from the gutters. He called a hello from the top of the ladder, grinned as she held up the pie box she’d brought from Eva’s shop, and waved her inside. She let herself in to the scent of something burning on the stove, and found Sam on the kitchen floor, leaning against the lower cabinets, coffee cup in ceramic shards by his hip and hazelnuts smoking in the pan, grey-faced and gasping as he struggled to breathe through the pain in his chest.

She called 911, and then she shouted for Dean.

***

Her mama and mom, vacationing in Vermont, were in New York four hours after Neve called them, by which point the doctors had run a battery of tests and installed Sam in a room on the cardiac wing, and soon thereafter one of them came to explain that he was dying. She used fancier, gentler phrases than that, of course— _possible congenital malformation_ and _critical damage to the heart muscle_ seemed her favorites _—_ but the meaning was the same: they’d keep Sam overnight for observation, and they'd send him home with meds to manage any pain, but there was nothing they could do to fix his heart, or its injury, and on its own it wouldn’t hold out for long—a month, maybe. Sam took the news quietly; Dean, white-faced, white-lipped, drilled the doctor about every possible procedure or medication or alternative therapy available until Sam lifted their entwined hands to his mouth and kissed his husband’s rough knuckles, gently, to quiet him, and the naked emotion on Dean’s face when he turned to look at him _hurt_.

There was a grief counselor, later, soft-voiced and well-meaning.  He had a tablet loaded with information on the hospital’s pastoral services and palliative care, spoke quietly about support groups to help prepare both family members and patients for the process ahead. It made her mother and mama tear up but her uncles, impossibly, smile, small and wry, and though Sam turned his into a cough and Dean suddenly took great interest in the plants on the window ledge, Neve saw them, the both of them, and she didn’t understand. Early that evening, coming down the hall with a tray from the lobby coffee shop, she heard Dean reading solemnly from the tablet. ‘Sam, dying is a natural part of life, but many people do not have experience in caring for—’

‘Oh, Jesus, Dean, shut up.’

‘No, come on, this is important. I need to know this. Oh, hey, look. The _grieving process_. Sam, the first step in the grieving process is to gank the damn demon chick trying to get you to drink her bl—’

Neve came around the corner to the sight of a dinner roll whizzing across the room to smack Dean directly between the eyes, butter-side against his skin. Sam’s heart may have been failing, but there was certainly nothing wrong with his _aim_. ‘Sweetheart,’ Dean greeted her, calmly mopping butter off his forehead with the rest of the roll.  ‘They have Sammy’s froofy shit in the coffee shop down there?’

‘It’s called _green tea_ , Dean,’ Sam said.

‘They have Sammy’s froofy green tea shit in the coffee shop down there?’

‘I mention yet how unfair it is that I’m the one with the crap heart?’

‘Always told you, man,’ Dean said, seriously. ‘Beer ‘n burgers is all you need.’

 ***

Neve woke, once, after midnight.

Her mama and mom had gone back to her apartment around 8:00, to feed the cats and get some sleep, with promises to bring good coffee and some breakfast in the morning. Sam had already been dozing by then, comfortable and warm; he was a little pale, maybe, but he certainly didn't look like he was dying.  Dean had refused to leave him all the same, and Neve hadn’t wanted to leave Dean alone, so they’d settled in to the recliners the nurses wheeled in for them, had watched the holo for a little while with the volume on low, shared a small bag of chocolate croissants and a cup of cocoa Neve had gone dashing downstairs to nab from the lobby shop just before they’d closed. Dean had drifted off a little before nine, his hand linked with Sam’s through the bedrail, face turned toward his husband, and Neve had watched them for a long while in the dark, heart aching, before she’d fallen asleep.

It took her a moment now, waking, to remember where she was. The recliner beside hers was empty. Hospital beds were impossibly narrow, and both of her uncles were big men, but Dean was lying with Sam in his anyway, one bedrail pushed down, blankets tucked soft and warm around them both. And though she might have expected Dean to be cradling his husband, he was the one curled against Sam’s chest, head tucked to his shoulder, one of Sam’s big hands cupping the back of his head, the other stroking gently up and down his spine, their legs tangled together, warm and close. Sam’s wedding band—old gold, thick and worn smooth with the years—glinted against the covers in the dim light from the hall.

‘We’ve had nearly thirty years, Dean,’ he was saying, so softly.

Dean’s voice was choked with tears. ‘It’s not enough.’

 


	2. Two

Sam's second heart attack, sudden and severe, came the following morning, without warning, as Dean was helping him into his jacket and Neve was at the door, scouting the easiest route to the elevators. Her mothers had already gone downstairs to bring the car around. Dean caught his husband before he hit the floor and had CPR started before the nurses, responding to Neve’s desperate shout, were ever in the room, and so Sam didn’t die that morning, though it was a near, near thing.

A day crawled by, snowy and slow.

Sam didn’t open his eyes.


	3. Three

Neve got back to the hospital that evening around nine, coffee and a bag of sandwiches in hand.  She'd left only for a few hours, long enough to get her mama and mom back to her apartment and call her TA for an update on the classes he'd covered that day, to take a quick shower and change her clothes and grab Dean some food that hadn't come from the hospital cafeteria. Joseph, her favorite of the nurses, was waiting near the desk when she stepped off the elevator. He came immediately to meet her.

'What?' she managed, throat tight, though she knew. She  _knew_.

He cupped her cheek in one big gentle hand. ‘He’s going, honey,’ he said, softly. 'Your uncle.'

Tears stung the back of her eyes. ‘Is his—is Dean—’

‘He’s with him, sweetheart, of course he is. Asked me to send you down quick as I could as soon as you came in.’

Neve abandoned the coffee and the food and hurried down the wide dim quiet hall to 533. The door to her uncle’s room was half-open; she slipped in, silently, the only light coming from the soft, dim lamp by Sam’s bed. Dean was standing by the window, arms crossed, his back to his husband—who was _awake_ , Neve realized, suddenly; Jesus, Sam was somehow awake, propped halfway to sitting in the long narrow bed. He looked wan and weary but somehow content, as though Dean’s slim, broad-shouldered back were the very sweetest thing in the world to see.

‘—me, you wouldn’t be doing this,’ Dean was saying tightly, as she stopped just inside the door. ‘The hell kind of hunter dies from _heart failure_ , Sammy?’

Sam smiled. ‘The lucky ones,’ he said, as gentle as his husband was gruff. He paused a moment. Then, earnestly: ‘Or, you know, the really, really dumb ones, Dean. Who fire tazers in pud—’

‘Shut it.’

‘I’m just saying.’

‘Faith healer in a tent, Sam. You took me to see a _faith healer_ in a _tent_.’

‘Saved your sorry ass, didn’t I?’

‘ _In a tent_.’

Neve didn’t have the first idea what either of them were talking about, but Sam was smiling, a sweet bright curve of ivory in the dim warm light. ‘Yeah, well. It was a nice tent, you know?’

Dean snorted.

Still smiling, Sam tipped his head back against the pillows behind him and was quiet for a few minutes, watching the snow and the long line of his husband’s back. Neve was about to say something, to let them know she was there, when, softly, ‘I was sorry about the swimmer,’ Sam said. ‘I really was. But I never regretted taking you there for a minute. Not once. Wouldn’t have even if a hundred other people had died.’

Dean looked around at him; then, quietly, as he came to tuck the blanket closer around Sam’s hips and sat down on the edge of the bed beside him: ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Dean, I—’

‘Oh, Jesus, Sammy, don’t.’

Sam’s breath was unsteady and his voice was weak, but the thread of hilarious bitchiness in it was still all his own. ‘Dean, for God’s sake, I am _dying_ ,’ he said. ‘You really not going to let me tell you how much I love you?’

Dean looked at him a moment, and then his mouth quirked, gentle and sweet, as he lifted his hand to cup his husband’s cheek, thumb smoothing gently along the bone. ‘You really think I don’t know?’

Sam brought a hand up to cover his. ‘Jerk,’ Sam whispered.

‘Bitch,’ Dean replied, as softly, and the two of them smiled at one another, sweet and easy in the dark. Dean spread his fingers just a little to catch his husband’s between them, closed their hands to an easy fist, and pulled them gently away from Sam’s face to rest on his thigh. Sam closed his eyes for the space of several heartbeats; Dean watched him with a sort of quiet desperation, beautiful eyes fixed on his face, drinking him in through the dark.

‘Dean?’ Sam murmured.

‘Right here, little brother.’

‘I never fell out of love with you, you know.’

‘Jesus Christ, you are really gonna sit here and talk about your feelings, aren’t you?’

Eyes still closed, Sam grinned, a flash of dimpled sunlight in his faded face. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I really am. Throw a bitch fit if you have to. I’ll wait.’

Dean said nothing for a moment, mouth curving to a small, sweet smile, then leaned in to kiss him—gentle, nearly chaste, cherishing, as unlike the rough-and-tumble uncle Neve had known all her life as anything she’d ever seen. Sam made a soft sound against his mouth and lifted a hand to cup the side of his face, and Neve knew she should leave, Jesus, she knew she should leave, because Dean may have told Joseph to send her down to them, but this was private, this was _theirs_ , and she didn't belong as its witness. But she didn't—Sam was _awake_ , and Sam was _breathing_ , and if she left now he might—by the time she came back he might—

Dean drew back just a little; Sam bumped their noses together, gently, once. ‘You scared?’ Dean murmured.

‘Dude, I’ve done this like six times.’

Dean snorted, softly. ‘Yeah. I ever mention how much it sucks to watch?’

‘One hundred Tuesdays, Dean.’

Dean was rubbing a thumb gently back and forth across his husband’s knuckles, where their hands were still tangled together on his lap, warm and close. ‘You never did tell me all the ways I died, you know.’

‘We’ll make a list when you get upstairs.’ Sam’s mouth twitched. ‘Trust me, the seventeen times you electrocuted yourself with your razor? Particularly classy.’

‘Blow me.’

Sam sighed, sadly. ‘No time.’

Dean made a sound that was a snort and a sob and a laugh all at once, and Sam smiled, reached up a hand again to trace the line of Dean’s cheek, his jaw, the soft curve of his mouth, as though he were making a memory of them. Dean leaned easily into his touch. ‘Your Christmas present’s in the bottom of my old duffel,’ he said softly. ‘Make sure to get it, okay?’

‘My what?’

‘Your Christmas present. ‘S in the hidden inside pocket, in the corner.’

‘Sam, when in the hell was the last time we bought one another Christmas presents?’

‘Year we were wearing meadowsweet wreaths and you nearly lost a molar,’ her uncle murmured. ‘And shut up. I want you to have it, all right?’

Silence for a moment. Then, curiously: ‘You get this one at a gasmart, too?’

‘Shut _up_ , Dean.’

‘I’m just wondering, man.’

‘I fished it out of the trash.’

‘Well, that sounds classy.’

‘Yeah. I thought so. Just remember to get it.’

‘All right, little brother.’

‘Don’t “little brother” me, jackass.’

‘All right, Samantha.’

Her uncle sighed, wearily. ‘You keep that up and I’m coming back to haunt your ass.’

Dean smiled. ‘Good,’ he said softly. ‘Won’t mind.’

‘Dean?’

‘Mmm.’

He swallowed. ‘When . . . I mean, after, are you . . . are you gonna be okay?’

Dean’s mouth quirked. ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Gonna find the nearest crossroads as soon as you go. You’ll be back by sunrise.’

Sam poked him, not gently. ‘Don’t be an ass.’

‘S gonna be awesome.’

‘ _Dean_.’

‘Sam, tell me one time that you died and I was okay.’

Sam said nothing, only looked down at their linked hands for a moment in silence. ‘I don’t . . .’ His voice broke, just a little. ‘I don’t want you to be—’

‘Hey, no,’ Dean said, thumbing one stray tear from his husband's face. ‘Sammy. Hey. I’ll be fine,’ he said, gently. ‘Okay? I’ll be fine, little brother. I’m not gonna be that long behind you this time; you know that. So you wait for me, you hear?’ he said. ‘Don’t go . . .wanderin’ off anywhere.’

‘Where d’you think I’d go?’

‘I got no idea. But I expect to get upstairs and find that you tripped and fell down a rabbit hole to purgatory or something, and when I have to organize a fuckin’ rescue party to come get you, I’m not gonna be happy. So. You know.’ He rubbed the back of Sam’s knuckles with his thumb again. ‘Surprise me.’

Sam smiled, and oh, he was fading, fading; Neve could see it, sense it—the long thread of his life spun out, ready to snap. ‘Gonna find Ash,’ he whispered. ‘Have him rewire the radio in the car. Nothing but pop and country.’

‘Sam, just because we’ll be dead does not mean I won’t kick your ass if you touch my car.’

Sam tried to laugh, but his breath caught, rattling, in his throat. ‘Be nice to see her again, won’t it?’ he whispered.

Dean smiled at him. There were tears standing in his eyes, but his voice was steady and soft. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed, smoothing his husband's hair gently back off his forehead. ‘Yeah it will, Sammy. So you just—you find her for us, when you get there. You find her and you just . . . you just wait there for me, okay?’

Sam’s eyelids were fluttering, gently. ‘The field, right?’ he whispered. ‘On the Fourth?’

‘Yeah.’ Dean blinked, and a single tear slipped down his face. He managed another smile, all the same. ‘Yeah, little brother. ‘S where I’ll come get you, okay? You just gotta wait for me.’

Sam’s ‘Always,’ was nearly soundless. Then: ‘Don’t go,’ he whispered.

‘Not goin’ anywhere, sweetheart.’

‘Can’t . . . can’t feel—’ His fingers twitched where they lay entwined with Dean’s. ‘Dean?’

‘I’m here.’ He untangled their hands so he could slide both of his beneath Sam’s back, pulled him gently up and forward into his arms. ‘I’m right here, little brother. I’ve got you. ‘S okay.’

Sam tipped his head against his husband's shoulder, face hidden in the crook of his neck. Then, softly, on a gentle exhale, nothing more than a thread of sound, soft and sweet and utterly content: ‘Dean.’

He said nothing else. Neve could hear him breathing still, but it was slower now, just small sips of air, each one softer and shallower and farther from the one before.  Dean kept him cradled him close, one hand cupped around the back of his head, cheek pressed against his; she remembered, then, the nurses saying that hearing would be the very last of her uncle’s senses to fade, because, ‘I love you, Sam,’ Dean was whispering, rocking gently. ‘I love you. ‘M right here, kiddo. ‘S okay. Just let go. I’ve got you.’ He squeezed his eyes shut against the tears that came leaking through his lashes. ‘Sammy, just let go.’

Neve felt it, from the door, the moment that he died: everything that made him _Sam_ suddenly, gently, irrevocably gone, leaving behind only blood and flesh and bone that was not and would never again be her uncle. Half a heartbeat later Dean tipped Sam’s head back just a little and bent to kiss him; Neve watched him pull the last air from her uncle’s lungs into his own mouth, and she was uncertain whether it was that or the soft, broken noise he made that caused her tears to finally spill over. He had Sam’s face tucked back against his shoulder, his own hidden against Sam’s hair, still rocking, slowly, as though Sam were a little boy he was lulling to sleep.

There was a soft, sudden—she wasn’t even certain what to call it. The sound like a hundred wingbeats, perhaps, and then out of nowhere—literally, out of _nowhere_ —there was another man in the room, standing beside the bed. He was in his late thirties, maybe, dark-haired and handsome, in slacks and a shirt and a _trench coat_ , of all things, and Neve was so utterly and completely out of her depth that she couldn’t find the breath to make a sound.

‘Dean,’ the man said, very softly, and there was a universe’s worth of emotion in his voice.

Dean didn’t look up. It was a long, long moment before he even stopped rocking Sam's body, longer still before he finally leaned forward to rest it gently back against the pillows. He tipped Sam’s head gently back, smoothed his hair back off his face, settled his long-fingered hands—arthritic and soft-skinned, but beautiful still—carefully in his lap, on top of the blankets. Sam might have been sleeping, save for the terrible, empty _stillness_ Neve felt when she looked at him.

The man beside him settled a hand gently on her uncle’s shoulder.

Dean didn’t look up. ‘Hell of a lot of good you’ve been.’

The man said nothing, only let his hand drift to rub gently at the back of Dean’s neck, and after a moment Dean tipped his head wearily against the man’s hip, eyes still on the quiet body in the bed. ‘You knew the terms of that last bargain when you made it,’ the man said gently, so very gently. ‘Both of you did. Sam wanted a few moments to say goodbye, and I could give him that, gladly, but . . . I couldn’t heal him, Dean.’

‘I know.’ He blew out a shaky breath. ‘I _know_ ; I just . . .’ He was silent a minute, steadying his voice. Then: ‘Don’t suppose you’d send me after him, at least.’

The man brushed tender fingers through her uncle’s hair. ‘Not yet.’

Dean closed his eyes, briefly, tears seeping again through his lashes. ‘Cas, please.’

‘Dean—’

‘The doctors said I got eighteen months,’ he interrupted quietly, and Neve took the shock of it in the pit of her stomach, a cold clenching pain that twisted all the way up to her heart. ‘And the last few ain’t gonna be pretty. After all the shit we’ve been through, I can’t just . . . ride out a little early? With Sammy?’

‘No, Dean,’ he said, softly. ‘There is . . . you have work to do here, still.’

‘Oh, for fuck's sa—’

‘Charlie’s daughter Neve.’ The man’s voice was very quiet. ‘She conceived a child twenty-seven days ago,’ he said, and Neve felt the jolt of it in the base of her spine, dropped a hand instinctively to her stomach. _What_? ‘A daughter. It is . . . imperative, that you be at her baptism.’

Dean looked up at him in silence. Then: ‘Like, averting-the-apocalypse, stars-crashing-into-the-sea imperative?’

‘Yes.’

He scrubbed a hand across his face. Then, plaintively: ‘For the love of Christ, can my family never catch a fuckin’ break?’

The man her uncle called Cas seemed to consider that, for a long moment, before he shook his head, regretfully. ‘No,’ he said, and Dean snorted out a helpless, weary laugh. Then: ‘She gonna be all right? Neve’s rugrat?’                    

‘I will watch over her.’

Dean snorted again, softly. ‘Cas, no offense, man, but that is not the most comforting thing you’ve ever said to me.’

Neve wasn’t certain she had ever seen as gentle a smile. ‘Nevertheless,’ he said. ‘It is the truth.’

Neither of them spoke again for a long moment, Dean looking back again at his husband's body. He reached out to take his hand again, stroked the back of Sam’s hand with his thumb. ‘Don’t wanna leave him alone,’ he whispered.

‘He is not alone, Dean.’ Cas’ eyes unfocused for a moment, as though he were looking impossibly far. ‘He is . . . with you, laughing, in a . . . you are setting a very large swath of open woodland on fire, which seems to me unwise.’

Dean laughed, which brought a fresh wash of tears to his eyes. 'It was an accident, asshat.'

Cas looked back at her uncle, gentle and fond. ‘Let me take you home?’

‘He’ll be okay?’ Dean demanded, voice rough, as he wiped at his eyes. ‘Until I get there? He’ll be safe?’

‘He is in heaven, Dean.’

‘Yeah, I _know_ that; ‘s why I’m askin’. Our last trip there wasn’t exactly awesome.’

‘He will be safe,’ Cas promised, softly. ‘Both of you will be, Dean. Always.’ 

Her uncle nodded, and after another long moment he finally pulled his hand free of Sam’s and stood; for the very first time in all of Neve’s life, he looked his age. He bent to kiss his husband, very gently, on his forehead, his cheek, his mouth. ‘I’ll see you soon, Sammy,’ he murmured. He stroked the side of Sam's still face, then straightened, very slowly, and turned, more slowly still, away. His face was wet. Cas opened up his arms to him, and to Neve’s surprise her uncle walked right into them, pressed his face into the man’s shoulder, wrapped his own arms tight around him. The stranger cradled the back of his head with one hand, holding him close, and then both of them vanished with another sound like the susurrus of wings.


	4. Four

Neve was five months pregnant, and Sam four months burned and buried, when she came downstairs one morning to find Dean in her kitchen, cooking French toast at the stove. There were two places already set at the table; a battered leather journal lay between them.

‘So it’s not good to shock pregnant ladies,’ he said, without turning, as he flipped the bread in the frying pan. ‘But peanut, you and I need to talk.’ 

 


	5. Five

Samantha Deanna Riley was three weeks old and a day past her unusually eventful baptism when her godfather Dean died, quietly, peacefully, sitting out in the early summer sun.

Neve made certain he was cremated, as he had requested, with the brass amulet Sam had left him at Christmas.


End file.
